Z.

The shell has definitely been sold. For those who messaged me about parts, please check/respond to the pm I've sent if you made an offer as I have a few people after the same parts. Cheers

Thanks fellas, I think Andrew is going to take the shell just waiting for him to confirm. Once he does, I'll move all the parts over to the "Parts and Tools for Sale" section and put some pricing on them to make it easier. I think most of it is still up for grabs, a few people have got first dibs on a couple of items. Stay tuned.

Pictures of aftermarket parts.. please let me know if your interested and need some more details. I'll post any more parts I come across.

Model: 280zx (1979) Location: Melbourne Price and Payment Conditions: Shell free to a good home, aftermarket parts extra (who takes the car gets first preference on all parts) Item Condition: Fair - all rust has been meticulously removed and new panels welded in, kick panels in front of rear wheel well still need replacement panels welded in. Body: Good condition Mechanical: Rolling Shell, Requires towing Extra Info: Old build thread here: http://www.viczcar.com/forum/topic/11913-280zx-project-bringing-a-beast-back-from-the-dead/?hl=beast Contact Details: PM preferred **Shell comes with 95% of stock parts required to finish project**, a few pieces may need to be sourced. As it sits is what you get. Lots of money has gone into this project and this will be a bargain for anyone interested in a 280zx project. Unfortunately my career has taken all my time the last few years and I can't justify leaving this sitting around in my garage any longer. I'd prefer it go to someone who will actually finish it, otherwise it will have to be scraped. Brief description: - All rust removed from the body and replacement panels welded in (albeit amateurishly) - All suspension bushes replaced with nolathane bushes - Wheel wells have been cut and re-welded ready for flares to fit larger wheels - 70% of the car painted in matte black - Underside of the car repainted with black stone guard paint - Rear bumper deleted, panel welded flush (amateurishly, could use some cleaning up) - Originally auto but manual gearbox, flywheel, manual pedal all come with shell Aftermarket parts to go with car (make an offer): - Genuine Watanabe Rims (14" x 10.5" rears, 14 x 7" fronts) **like new condition** polished lip, centres primed for painting (will come with gold metallic paint I planned to use) Brand new BF Goodrich radials tyres to suit - Rebuilt L28 (teared down, clean and re-sealed) N42 block, N42 head - Mild upgrade camshaft - New clutch - Manual gearbox - Coilovers (cleaned up and re-painted) - Camber adjustment plates - Megasquirts ECU - Megasquirts wiring harness - MSD coilpacks - Pacemaker extractors painted in ceramic black and heat wrapped - WRX seats - Gktech wheel spacers - Short shifter kit - Aftermarket fuel rail - Bosch wideband AF sensor and innovate AF gauge - Drilled & slotted rotors I don't remember all the details for the parts, if someone shows genuine interest I can get details for you. If no one is interested in the shell plus parts, I will sell of all parts individually. Thanks for all the help along the way gents, great community on here and it's a shame to be moving on.

I'm interested in the power steering setup.. pm sent

Anyone?

Anyone have a 280zx front wheel hub they're happy to donate/sell? Just cleaned one of mine up ready for new bearings and noticed a hairline crack in the bearing seat. Probably been there for the last 20 years when whoever changed the bearings over pressed it but I'd rather not risk having it break while I'm throwing the car through a corner! Thanks in advance!

Deal. Pm sent.

That's kinda funny I was always the other way.. welding wasn't an issue but prior to building the megasquirt pcb for this car I wasn't really confident doing soldering haha. It's always nice to just be able to pay someone else to take all the blame when it doesn't work though

Thanks mate hopefully she's on the road soon! Definitely would encourage others to build one of the megasquirts if they're thinking about getting one, great bit of fun and you learn a fair bit in the process too

So I managed to get a couple of weeks of work and get up to Mildura to do some more work on the Z. Here's what she looked like when I pulled the sheet back off her.. The primer coat showed I still needed to smooth the weld in a bit on either side of the rear.. looks like I'm in for a bit more sanding -_- Needed a bit more smoothing under the rear passenger window too. The rear end has come up really nicely though, I'm very happy with it. Finished fixing the filler area and the section under the windscreen where I welded in a new plate. I was a bit sick on sanding the body so I started off by getting the suspension sorted. I managed to pick up a set of second hand coilovers on this forum from 260det. They were pretty rusty but they only cost a 6 pack of VB so why not! Thanks to dat2kman for picking them up for me and posting them! The rears did come with an adjustable shock damper but they were pretty buggered and I had a new set of rear pedders shocks that came with my z so I pulled the sleeves off the rear coilovers to swap over to the new shocks. That was no easy task either! The grub screws were pretty rusted in there so I ended up having to drill them out and re-tap new threads. Here's the set of coilovers with the old shocks pulled apart. New shocks... Cleaned up the front coilovers and the new shocks and gave them all a lick of red metallic paint. While they were drying I thought I'd start getting the rims ready for painting. As I mentioned earlier in the build thread I wanted to do them with a polished lip and painted gold metallic centers. First I had to polish the primer off the lips and polish them up. Luckily old Nissan 4 stud has the same PCD as 90's Honda's. Just bolt up the rim, idle the car in 4th and hold sandpaper to it... makes for a much quicker job That being said, the rears had some deep pitting from the cast and scratches where someone had gouged into the metal with coarse sandpaper which was a pain in the ass. I also had to clean off a bit of gutter rash around the lips. I ended up using a file and taking a skim off the entire lip as the wheel was spinning to smooth them back out. You can see the pitting in these pictures Progress shots.. Rears finished Front finished All ready to be taped up and painted Here's some of the parts that arrived since I was home last.. Adjustable camber plates for the front coilovers and some spring hats (there was a set missing in the coilovers I bought) New fuel rail Adjustable thermofan controller New billet camshaft from Clive Cams in Melbourne Stimulator board for my Megasquirt plus some shots of the finished boards Wideband O2 sensor and controller/gauge Optical crank angle sensor from a skyline to drive the ecu Some dust boots and tierod ends to reco the steering rack with I then fibreglassed up the gaps in the wheel arches where I had flared them out to fit the wider rims. Then painted them in black stone guard. Stripped back the doors and fenders. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly considering all the rust I found under the rest of the cars paint, the driver door was swiss cheese along the bottom and both fenders had rust repair plated welded in. The passenger side fender repair was pretty good but the driver side was obviously done by someone else and was just a plate welded on the back and covered with filler on the front. I left the passenger side as it was but set about cutting out the driver side repair and do it properly. I then cut the entire bottom section of the driver door off and bent up a new piece to weld in. Considering I don't have a sheet metal bender or press, I was pretty happy with the quality of the replacement panels I was making up by hand. Once I had the new repairs welded in I fibreglassed up the rubber strip holes in the fenders and the side mirror holes in the doors (I'm looking to put fender mirrors on the car). As you can see the driver door was mangled around the side mirror area.. just a mess of booger weld. I decided it was too much of a pain to try and fix that mess properly so I just smoother it out with fibreglass and a skim of filler in the end. I also fibreglassed up the washer holes on the headlights.. useless idea having washers there really. I had a mate come out and help me finish off smoothing out the body. Then put it in grey high fill primer and blocked it back smooth. As for the topcoat paint choice I wanted matte black. This was for two reasons 1. it makes for easy spot repairs for any little scuffs I get when I track the car 2. it just looks tough . I picked up some standard matte black paint from the paint shop but I also got the bloke to mix me up some midnight black with matting agent in it. I did this because I wanted the car to have a really dark black on it which you can't get with the standard matte black. So by using the darkest black available and adding a matting agent to it I could get a better colour to use for the last coat I put on it. By using the cheaper stuff underneath I managed to save quite a bit of money and still get the same result I tried to get a shot showing the difference in the two paints.. Body finished Could have probably gone a bit more matting agent in the top coat as it came out somewhere between matte and flat but I'm still really happy with it and I'll knock it back with some 2000 grit wet and dry to take some sheen off it anyway. I also managed to get the doors and fenders in primer but unfortunately I ran out of time again and had to head back to Melbourne. Here's some shoots of them packed back inside the car though. That's as the car sits currently. Hopefully I can get some time off soon to go back and paint the doors, fenders and hood. Stay tuned.

That's pretty straight forward.. might just do that then. I was under the impression the z31 cv shafts had a shaft on either end I didn't realize the hub end was just a plate like on the 280's. That makes it heaps easier! Thanks for the info luvemfast!

Just trying to work out how I can marry up a r200 longnose out of a z31 with my 280zx rear end.. the diff will bolt right up if I'm correct but whats the best option for cv's to use? can you swap the half shafts between diffs so I don't have to use the z31 cv's as they won't be thee right size? Reason: I currently have a r180 on my 280zx but I've also got a z32 300zx lsd shortnose diff and I know a wrecker with an open z31 r200 diff along with crossmember, cv's and lower control arms. I'm thinking about swapping the shortnose lsd internals into a longnose housing as a cheap alternative to buying an original r200 longnose. Cheers, any help appreciated

So I managed to get back up to Mildura over winter holidays and get stuck into the Z again. I had a couple of packages rock up while I was away which was nice. New set of drilled and slotted front and rear rotors and some new engine mounts... Absolute top bloke who sent me the engine mounts. Sent me a free dizzy cap and rotor for an L series engine and a box of fuses tapped to the back of a "help from above" booklet.. I'm not a religious man but who hasn't been in a situation where you're praying you have the right fuse in your glove box! Managed to get the hood in primer and finish up welding some panels on the car. Finished up pumping out the inner guards and re-welding them.. just need to give it a coat of fibreglass filler to fill the gaps and put some under body paint on it now. Recon I'll be able to fit some pretty wide rims with a mean offset under there now Here's a progress shot of the rear with some primer on it. You can also see the replacement panel I had to make up for the rear passenger side and a few bits I filled in a the bottom of the bumper.. This is pretty much where the car sits currently.. I managed to finish up the body work and put a couple of layers of primer onto it. Unfortunately I had to head back to Melbourne again for uni at this point. But I have been collecting a few parts to take back with me and Dad has assured me there's also a pile of stuff showing up at home for me. Here's some of the parts of collected over the last few months. Managed to pick up some extractors from "YellowRX" on here. Cleaned off the rust, gave them a fresh lick of hi temp black paint and wrapped them in heat wrap. Came up pretty nice! I ordered a MegaSquirt 3 with the expander board, wideband O2 sensor, intake air temp sensor and new wiring loom. Here's a few shots of the assembly process of the board (I'll throw some completed shot ups when I get it back out of storage to take with me up to Mildura)... I know it's easier to just pay the extra $40 to get an assembled unit but most of the reason I went the Mega Squirt route was so I could assemble and tune it myself (well that and it is capable of running my v12 project ). I know the community is pretty split over their performance but I recon it's a great way to learn about engine management. Plus the whole idea of this project was to do everything myself and learn from the experience. Also grabbed a VT coilpack module and some MSD coils to go on it. Looking to run a wasted spark system on the L28. Picked up some BFG radials to suit the watanabe rims .. bit pricey but I really like the large profile and raised white lettering on older cars. Shot of one of the 10.5 inch rear rims with the tyre My gktech spacers also rocked up. These are for the front but I'll see where the rear rims sit when I put the suspension back on. I'll be heading back up to Mildura on Sunday for a couple of weeks so stay tuned for more updates!

Just a quick update as I haven't been keeping up with this.. I didn't end up getting the Z down to Melbourne unfortunately but I have been back to work on it a few times over the last 6 months so there's a bit of progress! I finish up uni in about a week so I'll post pics and continue the build thread then. Looking forward to working on it again this summer!

Sorry Wayne, I didn't know they'd been sent it's going to my parents address and I didn't check this thread again. I thought you were going to send me a pm with you account details when you sent it.. I've got the account details you pm'd me a couple of days ago now though and and sent the money through so you should see it turn up in the next few days. Sorry mate should have sent me a msg sooner I had no idea you had even got around to taking them off yet. Thanks again for the help

I'll take the engine crane for $50.. Bargain! PM sent

Thanks Mick thats what I wanted to know! Cheers for the advice fellas! The reason I ask is the bloke at the shop couldnt seem to find a service kit for them when I called but I think he was new and a bit confused at what I was after so I thought I'd double check they are available. Didn't want to open them up if I couldn't replace them Definitely agree that you shouldn't play with your brakes of you're not sure what your doing. Most important part on the car!

Anyone know if the seals inside 280zx brakes (calipers) are generic o rings that can be bought off the shelf? I dont want to open them unless I have replacments

Thanks for the advice fellas. I did actually look at putting a coil on plugs system in but I had a cheap supplier for genuine MSD DIS coil packs which was half the price it was going to cost for a set of new coil on plugs... Being a tight ass uni student that made mind up for me pretty quick

Thanks six shooter! Great bit of information there.. Still feeling my way through the info on these systems, there's a fair bit to get your head around but all very interesting learning how it all works. Good to have blokes with some experience willing to take the time to help us work out how to put it all together. Much appreciated. I think I might just jump the internals and run a z32 or similar ignitor as it appears to be easiest way to set it up without having to add extra parts to the board and still utilize the expander board I got as well.

I'll take a fuel rail if it doesn't go with the engine.. preferably o ring style but if not I'll take the barbed. Cheers! PM'd

Thats the one If anyones interested I think I've found the best solution now.. It sounds like jumping the internal module on the gm coilpack plate and instead igniting the coils with a Z32 or similar ignitor being driven by the MS3X is the way to go

Anybody know how to setup the MS3X board to run VT-VY coilpacks? Only information I can find is from people using previous versions of megasquirts and it doesn't seem to be applicable as they add another board to there version of MS to gain extra spark control outputs but the board they use has a "high voltage" output as compared to the MS3X which only puts out a "logic level" output and is not a high enough current to drive the coil directly. I'm guessing I use the GM ignition module to be used to drive the coils and use MS3To drive the ignition module. Not sure how though! Any help greatly appreciated! Also if anyone knows which wire is which on VT-VY ignition module plugs (13 wire plug) feel free to share. Thanks Liam

Yeah I do if that's still ok Wayne.. I sent you a PM let me know if it still hasn't come through